


The Price

by TheNarator



Category: The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Barry done fucked up this time, Cisco is too tired for this bullshit, Consequences of Time Travel, Creepy, Eobard Thawne is a Creepy Creeper who Creeps, Face Stealing, I just want someone to rain bloody vengeance on all the people who have hurt Cisco, M/M, Major Character Resurrection, Minor Character Death, it might as well be Eobard
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-29
Updated: 2016-11-29
Packaged: 2018-09-02 23:01:12
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,766
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8686768
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheNarator/pseuds/TheNarator
Summary: For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.Cisco learns there's yet another consequence to Barry altering the timeline. This one might not be so bad, depending on how you look at it.





	

**Author's Note:**

> this is mostly born of me wanting someone to point out what a shitty friend barry's been to cisco lately. and, you know, me being reversevibe trash.

_For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction._

It was one of the basic tenets of every kind of science, something everyone learned in school. Apart from being Newton’s third law, it was also a warning. Actions have consequences, it said. Be careful what you put out into the world.

Cisco assumed that the consequence for Barry changing the timeline to spend a few more months with his mother was Dante’s death. That seemed equal, he thought. That seemed opposite. On top of that there were the additional effects of Caitlin’s powers and Alchemy’s presence in the city, which seemed more than equal to what Barry had done. It seemed like enough, it seemed reasonable to assume that was all that there was.

As Cisco was beginning to learn though, time travel was rarely reasonable.

He was still reeling from his fight with Barry when he unlocked his apartment door late that night. He didn’t know what he was going to do tomorrow, whether he could _ever_ go back to STAR Labs after what had happened, but right now what he needed was sleep. All he wanted was to be unconscious for a while, to not think about Barry and Dante and whether or not he would ever be okay again, but he had a feeling that his dreams weren’t going to let him forget.

 _Barry had better not be in there_ , Cisco thought to himself.

He pushed inside, dropped his bag by the door and leaned against it, closing his eyes and sighing deeply. He’d pop a hot pocket in the microwave for dinner, then-

“Hello Cisco,” a familiar voice suddenly interrupted his thoughts.

Cisco’s eyes flew open, to find not Barry but HR draped artfully over his couch, arms outstretched across the back and one ankle resting on the opposite thigh.

“What the hell are you doing here?” Cisco demanded, clutching at his heart.

“I came to see you,” HR said simply, a gentle smile very unlike his normal overly enthusiastic grin playing around his mouth.

“You saw me all day at the lab,” Cisco snapped, pushing off the door to stand straight. “What’s this about?”

“No Cisco,” said HR, his voice eerily calm, “you and I haven’t seen each other for a long time.”

Cisco frowned. Upon further inspection HR did not at all look like himself. For one thing he was sitting still, and was without his drumsticks. He was dressed in a black sweater, like the ones Harry had used to wear, and his hat was missing.

“Harry?” Cisco wondered. He couldn’t imagine why Harry would come all the way from Earth-2 to see him, but it clearly wasn’t HR sitting on his couch.

“Getting warmer,” said whatever version of Harrison Wells it was, still smiling placidly.

Cisco took a few tentative steps toward him, trying to puzzle him out. If it wasn’t HR, and it wasn’t Harry, then-

The question was abruptly answered for him when the body came into view.

It had been blocked by some of his other furniture, so he only saw it when he was within lunging distance of the man on the sofa. It was lying on the floor, its cheeks sunken as though with age but the face still recognizable. It was wearing a fedora.

“Oh god,” Cisco choked, covering his mouth with one hand.

“He was very annoying,” said Eobard Thawne, for it was Eobard Thawne, from his position still lounging on the couch.

“So you killed him?” Cisco demanded, voice high and shrill to his own ears.

Thawne frowned in mock concern. “I thought you’d be happy,” he said lightly. “I was under the impression you weren’t a fan of his, being that he was a useless fraud.”

“That doesn’t mean I wanted him to die!” Cisco protested.

“Would you prefer I had killed the other one?” Thawne asked conversationally. “I certainly can, if you want. It would be my pleasure.”

“How are you even here?” Cisco asked hopelessly, trying not to let the tears leak out. How, how could this day have gotten any worse?

“Now Cisco,” Thanwe said chidingly, “I’m sure you’re clever enough to figure that out.”

Cisco closed his eyes, sighing as realization hit him. “Barry,” he said simply.

Thawne unfolded himself, sitting forward on the couch to look at Cisco with an almost hungry expression. “There’s my clever boy.”

Cisco backed away a few fumbling steps, and Thawne stood up from the couch. Instinctively Cisco’s fingers went to his pocket, going for his phone and the panic button that would summon Barry, but the thought of having Barry, his brother’s _murderer_ , in his house one more time made him withdraw his hand. He did not need Barry Allen.

Instead Cisco put up his own hand, palm out as though preparing to fire a blast. He didn’t know if he could do it without the goggles, but Thawne didn’t need to know that.

“Stay back,” Cisco warned. “I have powers now, powers you can’t imagine. I’ll fuck you up, don’t think I won’t.”

“I know your powers, Cisco,” Thawne inclined his head, “and rest assured I have a healthy respect for them.”

“Then why are you here?” Cisco wanted to know.

“I told you,” Thawne said, just a calmy as before, “I came to see you. And to offer my condolences.”

“Your condolences?” Cisco asked, perplexed.

“For the death of your brother,” Thawne said, and there was something approaching sadness in his voice

“Don’t pretend you care!” Cisco snarled. “We both know you’d have killed him yourself if he’d been in your way.”

“But I didn’t kill him,” Thawne pointed out, as though this were the most reasonable thing in the world. “No, that blood is on Barry Allen’s hands.”

“What’s your point?” Cisco asked waspishly.

“My point is that he’s not the hero most people think he is,” Thawne said, eyes boring into Cisco’s. He took a few slow steps toward Cisco, until they were standing only a few feet from each other. “And now, you understand that.”

Cisco choked down bile as he said it, but there could be no other reply. “Barry made a mistake. That doesn’t mean he’s not a hero.”

“Do heroes treat their allies the way he’s treated you?” Thawne inquired.

“I told you,” Cisco said, “he made-”

“A mistake, yes,” Thawne finished for him. He turned to the side and began walking, turning slow circles around Cisco as he spoke. “Tell me, was mocking and belittling you, over and over, just a mistake?”

“He was just teasing,” Cisco said reflexively, even though those memories still stung. Working for hours on the metahuman monitoring app and having Barry tell him he had too much time on his hands hadn’t exactly felt good.

“Was welcoming a man who did nothing but insult, attack and try to kill you, more than once, onto your team and into your lab just a mistake?” Thawne asked next, as Cisco turned to keep the other man in his sights.

“We needed Harry,” Cisco didn’t even have to wonder who he was talking about, “and-”

“Was keeping an object that gave you painful visions lying around because it kept him ‘motivated’ just a mistake, Cisco?” Thawne wondered, and his voice had grown hard as though the very thought made him angry.

“How do you even _know_ about that?” Cisco demanded.

“I have my ways,” Thawne said dismissively. He came to a stop where he had started, standing in front of Cisco with Cisco’s outstretched palm between them. “Tell me, after everything he’s done, and everything he’s put you through, are you honestly still willing to call him a hero?”

Cisco opened his mouth to say _yes_ , to spit the word in Thawne’s smug face, but for some reason no sound came out. He stood there a moment, eyes locked on Thawne, but he couldn’t force the word from between his lips. In the end, Thawne was right. He couldn’t call Barry a hero.

He looked away, ashamed of his own weakness, but he could see out of the corner of his eye that Thawne’s face had broken into a smile.

“You see,” Thawne pressed. “You see, now, why I hate him so much.”

“That doesn’t mean I hate you any less,” Cisco turned his gaze back on Thawne, trying to look as defiant as he could.

“Doesn’t it?” Thawne demanded, his words coming faster now. It made them seem less calculated, more sincere. “Can you not, for one moment, understand why I’ve done what I’ve done, in the service of destroying Barry Allen?”

“You killed me,” Cisco reminded him.

“And Barry killed Dante,” Thawne countered. “Which crime, I wonder, is worse in your eyes?”

Cisco didn’t answer. Of course the answer was Dante, he would have traded his own life for his brother’s without hesitation, but seeing it laid out like that made it harder to stay angry with the man before him.

“You’re evil,” Cisco said at last, the one thing of which he was absolutely certain.

“You work with a glorified vigilante,” Thawne reminded him. “Surely you understand that morality is relative.”

Cisco closed his eyes and let his hand drop to his side. “What do you want?” he asked wearily.

He heard the step forward, but he only opened his eyes again when he felt the gentle brush of fingers on his cheek. Thawne caressed the soft skin, his eyes full of a strange longing that made Cisco want to lean into the touch and run away all at the same time.

“I want what I’ve wanted since that day in the pipeline,” Thawne told him quietly. “I want to make things right between us.”

“You want me to forgive you?” Cisco asked incredulously. He did not dislodge Thawne’s hand.

“No,” said Thawne, and his voice was almost a whisper. “I want you to love me.”

With that he leaned forward and closed the distance between them, brushing his lips carefully against Cisco’s. For a moment Cisco did nothing, too tired and too weak and in too much pain to reject the offered comfort. Then he let his lips move against Thawne’s -- Eobard’s -- slowly and without intent. It was a simple kiss, almost chaste, and when Eobard withdrew Cisco opened his eyes without realizing he had closed them.

“I can’t,” Cisco said quietly.

“I’ll make you,” Eobard promised.

“How are you going to do that?” Cisco wondered, not nervous, just curious.

Eobard grinned, fond and indulgent, sly and manipulative, vicious and hungry.

“By hunting down everyone who’s hurt you and making them pay.”

**Author's Note:**

> i want to make it known that i don't actually think eobard is some kind of hero for trying to kill barry. barry might be a fuckboy but eobard is still evil.


End file.
